Away From Home

Krishna Mohan Mishra

 

Nikhil didn’t know what he and his friends were doing on a train at Jogbani Station, three miles from their homes on the Indian side of the border. It was 3 p.m., and though it was a Saturday, Nikhil was supposed to be home by now studying. This was his father’s rule. When his father discovered that he wasn’t there, he would be angry. Nikhil tried not to think about that.

Like his friends, Nikhil was a ninth grader and went to Sarochiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya, a public high school in Biratnagar. On the train he sat opposite Arun and Manoj, who sat cross-legged, leaning against the backrest as if they were ordinary passengers. Their faces betrayed no sign of urgency to get off the train. They wore their usual happy-go-lucky smiles. Nikhil tried not to look worried and flapped his knees as he gazed at them and out the window, inhaling the hot May air thick with the mixed smell of metal and wood coming from the compartment and from the garbage piled up on the platform in open trash bins. People stood scattered all over the platform, alone and in groups, chattering, a vendor’s voice croaking in the distance over the noise from time to time. Some stood close to the train and spoke Nepali; Nikhil thought they came from Biratnagar, too. They wore happy see-off smiles and talked with people who might have been their relatives at the adjacent windows. Behind them rose a column, like the ones elsewhere on the platform, made of metal bars and partly covered with metal sheets. It had a poster that showed a boy, age about 10, lying on his stomach on a bed, his head propped up on his elbow and looking up from a notebook at the camera, a pen in his hand held up in the air. A line ran beside his face: My future secured. Another line of type, beneath the photograph, said Invest in National Savings Certificate (NSC). Across the platform, a bookstall stood on one side of the waiting room door; a tea stall, on the other. In front of the tea stall a clock, hanging on a beam that branched from another pillar, displayed the time.

Nikhil hoped his friends just meant to have some fun, that they’d jump up to leave the train as soon as the whistle blew. Not that they’d never drifted this far before. A couple of times they’d crossed over to Jogbani to watch a movie. But their more usual habit was to walk half a mile west of their homes to a mango orchard walled with a barbed wire fence. Arun and Manoj would go there whenever they pleased, missing their classes, but Nikhil would join them only on Saturdays. The orchard was a haunt for several other boys their age and older, too. Like them, Nikhil and his friends sneaked in through where the wires had gone loose. They didn’t know anything about who the property belonged to. Nor did they care. They liked that it was quiet and provided plenty of spots screened from the road. They sat in one of these spots and talked movies. It was a good way to compensate for not being able to watch every movie the two hometown theaters showed. By turns they’d narrate movies one of them had missed. Nikhil loved talking movies. But sometimes when they had enough money, Arun and Manoj would prefer to join one of the groups playing cards around the place. The two not only gambled but also smoked cigarettes, occasionally switching to cannabis. It was not uncommon for Arun to carry a vial of it in his pocket, in addition to a packet of cigarettes. Nikhil never smoked. When his friends gambled, he told himself to get up and head home, but he couldn’t obey himself. He didn’t want to leave them—he didn’t have any other friends. His other classmates were too rich and snobbish. He stayed and watched. He joined in when they played jute patti—a type of rummy. But when they played flash—a three-card poker game—he just sat and watched. Arun was more daring and talented at flash than Manoj. Sometimes, when he won, he treated him and Nikhil to a movie.

“It’s an express train,” Arun said in his thick, coarse voice, drumming his fingers on his knees. He had curly hair and a flat nose, his skin nut-brown like that of Manoj. He was in a sleeveless shirt, showing his muscular arms. Nikhil and Manoj each wore a T-shirt.

“Is it?” Manoj sounded excited.

“Do you think I’m lying?” Arun turned to Manoj, pausing his fingers and letting his smile fade momentarily. “Every year my father makes a trip to Calcutta by this train.” His father was a street vendor. He went to Calcutta to get children’s clothes, which he sold by spreading them on the sidewalk of Main Road. “It takes four hours to reach Katihar, and it returns the same day at noon.”

“Four hours!” Manoj raised his eyebrows.

“You’re scared,” Arun said mockingly.

“Not at all. I’m just asking,” Manoj said. His father was an assistant at a furniture shop on Rangeli Road.

While playing cards in the orchard, Manoj once complained that his father kept nagging him about not attending classes. “How you care about that!” Arun said each time, letting his voice drawl. “You can’t imagine what awful things my father says to me. But I never give a shit about it.” His friends sounded as if their father never beat them. Not wanting to look as if he were the only one who feared his father, Nikhil said, smiling, “I don’t, either.” Manoj refused to believe it. Arun accused Nikhil of fearing his father enough to pee in his pants. “With his pockmarked face your father looks like Om Puri,” Arun added, making Manoj laugh. Nikhil didn’t like this—it wasn’t right to compare his father to a movie villain—but he kept smiling anyway. “He does scold me sometimes, but he never beats me,” he told his friends. As if to placate him, Arun said, “Anyway, we all three are fed up with our fathers. And one day we’re going to run away from home to teach them a lesson.”

“Are we really going to Katihar?” Nikhil asked now, smiling. He avoided facing the people outside—in case one of them was one of his father’s customers and recognized him. His father was a bicycle mechanic and did his repair jobs in front of their two-room apartment.

“How much can you put up with your father’s nagging after all?” Arun frowned, dramatically. “I promise we’re going to have enough fun on the way.” Twisting his body, Arun pulled out his old pack of cards. He held it in the air for a second like he was showing a piece of diamond, then pulled out his purse. He began to count the money he’d won at cards over the week. “Six hundred rupees! With this much money, we can get to Bombay.”

“You’re great!” Manoj grinned at Arun. “I wonder when I’ll be as smart as you.”

“Just keep yourself in my company,” Arun said.

Nikhil began to feel something knotting in his stomach, and he had trouble keeping his smile in place. He continued to flap his knees. When a tea vendor called, “Chaya Garam,” in an uncanny, throaty voice as he passed, carrying his large-size kettle, Nikhil mimicked it.

A chill passed through him when the train began to glide and there was no sign of his friends hurrying from their seats. What he’d been looking at disappeared from the window, and for a few minutes he saw the rest of the station gliding by: more people, scattered and rooted to the ground, alone and in groups, watching the train; more pillars and posters; one more waiting room; one more bookstall; one more tea stall; a sink with a row of five taps; the wall marking the end of the station; and finally a stream of small ramshackle houses interspersed in the dusty trees, fronted by bushes and heaps of garbage.

As he stared out, Nikhil figured that Arun and Manoj had already decided to run away from home when he met them at their rendezvous point today. “Let’s go,” Arun had said, both he and Manoj rising to their feet, as soon as Nikhil had walked over to them. “Where?” he asked more than once as they crossed the shade of the orchard, and each time Arun replied, “Just come with us.”

▱

The train sped through the countryside, its wheels clanging against the tracks. There was a draft, and the cool air whipped Nikhil’s and Arun’s hair. Manoj had slid closer to Arun for a better view. Which was nothing but fields of crops and wild bushes, interrupted now and then by a small group of houses, some brick-built, others made of mud and bamboo, most of them fronted by a cowshed and heaps of straw and dung. An endless row of small blurry trees on the horizon seemed to move along with the train, while the rest of the earth rushed backward like floodwater. Arun and Manoj seemed amused. When they passed a river or the chimney of a brick factory or a grove of bamboos or a swamp, Arun cried, “Look!” and each time Manoj sprang out of his seat and clung his face to the window and watched, grinning. To Nikhil each of these places seemed like one in a horror movie stalked by a monster—a tall, fat, hairy giant just out of hiding in search of prey. Still, Nikhil leaned in, pretending to be equally excited.

He shouldn’t feel scared, Nikhil told himself. His home hadn’t been a home, after all. If his friends thought they’d find a better place away from home, they might find one. They might have to work at a restaurant washing dishes and tables, but at least they’d be free from their fathers. He, too, wouldn’t have to fight the terror of his father day in and day out. The only time he wasn’t afraid of him was when he was at school and when he was studying. Saturdays never felt like holidays to him—his father always wanted him back before three. When Nikhil was late, all the way back home, he prayed his father would be out on a break for a betel. If his father was home, he’d be working on a bicycle and talking to a customer, smiling, his hands and his white old kurta and pajama covered with grease. As soon as he noticed Nikhil, his smile faded from his pockmarked face and he paused his work, glared at him and said, “Where the hell have you been?” Nikhil froze, his head bent down. “Okay, get in,” his father said. “I’m coming in a while to teach you a lesson.” Nikhil entered and sat on the edge of the cot, where his parents slept, opposite the door to the kitchen. In there his mother baked chapatis over the mud stove. She gave him a glance or two, looking as if she didn’t know whether to feel angry or sympathetic. “How many times I’ve told you to come back home in time,” she said. “But do you ever listen?” He was numb with fear, listening to what his father said to the customer outside. Nikhil could sense his words sizzling with anger. When his father came in, he passed Nikhil on his way to the backyard, which was fenced with bamboo strips and barely big enough for a toilet (they had a wooden latrine) and a hand pump. A small area was enclosed with a sheet of jute for Nikhil’s mother to have a bath. He looked about for a stick, and he snapped a piece of wood from the bottom of the fence. He made Nikhil dance while swinging the stick around his arms and legs, before finally landing it across his back four times.

▱

The train squealed to a halt at Forbesganj Station, which looked the same as the earlier one, except for the faces in the crowd and the fact that these people seemed more desperate to get on. After about five minutes, the train whistled and began to glide, gathering speed slowly. Soon it was out in the open, racing like a storm as before, and once again the window grew drafty and offered the view of the same landscape with the same scary feel to it. Arun and Manoj continued to shout and spring as before.

“Katihar is bigger than Biratnagar,” Arun said. “We can easily find some work.”

“And we can watch a movie every night,” Manoj said.

“Only if they show a late-night show,” Nikhil said, trying to look and sound as excited as his friends.

“I’m sure one of the theaters does,” Arun said.

“I hope one of them is showing ‘Coolie,’” Nikhil said. They all liked Amitabh Bachchan.

“We’ve already seen it,” Manoj said.

He started telling the story for Nikhil, though Arun, too, listened with interest. When Manoj skipped a scene or had difficulty recalling a piece of dialogue, Arun jumped in. It was the first time ever that Nikhil didn’t enjoy listening to a movie story and had a hard time. When it was over, they spent a few minutes gazing out the window. Then, Arun reached up and pulled down the shutter. From his pocket he pulled out his cards. Twisting his body, he swung around to Manoj and then crossed his legs. Manoj followed suit. Nikhil moved away from the window so the three of them made a triangle. Arun’s hands moved like a machine as he dealt five cards to each, and Nikhil knew they were playing jute patti.

It was easier to play cards than to listen to a story or stare outside—at least, it offered him the excuse to let his worry surface to his face. Arun and Manoj laughed loudly when they happened to pick up the card they had been waiting for. As he picked one from the deck and threw another from his hand, Nikhil pictured his father dipping a part of a flat bicycle tube into a pot of water, his pockmarked face stern. When his mother walked up to him with a glass of tea, he took it without washing his greasy hands, as usual. He was careless enough to scratch his face and hair with his dirty hands. When he finished the tea and put the glass down, there were black fingerprints around it. His mother was back at work—soaping his father’s kurta, her face looking tired and worried. After washing the clothes, his mother would sweep and mop the floors and then washed to get ready to cook. Nikhil often wondered why his mother never ran away from his father. He thought she would easily find a better man, considering how pretty and quiet she was.

▱

“It must be Araria,” Arun said as the train eased into the next station. He put his cards facedown and twisted around to push the shutter back up. Beyond the window bars, Nikhil saw the platform and the sign approaching. As at the earlier stations, the sign was a metal board held up by metal poles, all painted yellow; it bore two lines of black letters, one upon the other. The bottom one was in Urdu that he didn’t understand; the top one in Hindi said Araria. As the train passed the sign into the shade of the platform, clanking and squealing to a halt, the heat and stink of the station, along with the noise of people talking and shouting, seemed to penetrate the compartment. He, like Manoj, was waiting for Arun to pick up his cards when a man in a black uniform, a pile of papers clutched in his fingers, passed the window. “TT,” Arun gasped as he swung back, snatching the cards from Nikhil and Manoj. He swept all the cards into a pile, thrust them into his pocket, and hurled himself out of the compartment on his way to the toilet at the other end. Manoj ran after him. Nikhil moved into the next compartment, where a middle-aged couple sat face-to-face, their baggage—two large suitcases—pushed under their seats. The woman wore a silk sari, gold earrings, and a gold necklace. The man was in a suit. They had smiles on their wheat-brown, chubby faces and didn’t seem to mind when Nikhil sat beside the man.

“Your ticket!” Nikhil heard a thick, authoritative voice say behind him, when the train was back in motion. He wished he’d bought a ticket—he had fifty rupees that his mother had given him as pocket money. But he hadn’t known he and his friends wouldn’t get off the train. The voice repeated the words every few minutes, firm and authoritative. Soon the TT was standing in front of him. He looked over at the man sitting beside Nikhil and said, “Your tickets, please.” Nikhil leaned back, glancing toward the couple, trying to give the impression that he was their son.

“Our tickets have been checked already,” the man said, sounding grave.

“Very well, sir. Have a nice journey!” The TT smiled, his eyes shifting from the man to the woman to Nikhil. Nikhil tried not to look afraid.

“Thanks,” the couple said in unison, smiling back, and the TT moved on, repeating his phrase, switching back to his earlier tone. It took a whole hour for the voice to fade and the next station to arrive. Nikhil moved back to his seat.

When the train was back in motion, Arun and Manoj showed up, their faces washed with sweat. They smiled at Nikhil.

“The TT is gone.” Arun sighed.

“Thank god we ran in time,” Manoj said. “We’ve been in the toilets.”

“And you?” Arun asked Nikhil.

“I didn’t go anywhere.”

“I can’t believe it,” Manoj said.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” Arun said. “You must have been hiding somewhere, too.”

For a moment, the three of them sat there, Arun and Manoj sighing and thanking god repeatedly. Then Arun suggested they should go stand at the gate for more air.

“What’s the punishment for riding a train without a ticket?” Nikhil stood on the edge of a gate, holding onto the handles on each side. The gravel and the bushes before him sped furiously and looked like streams compared to the uneven grassland sloping away toward the ramshackle, tin-roofed houses and the rice fields behind them.

“Fare plus fine, I guess.”

“And if you don’t have the money?” Nikhil thought of the pocket money his mother had given him. Arun and Manoj stood just outside the entrance to the compartment, leaning against its edges. They looked out the other gate. The air had wiped the sweat from their faces. Arun rounded his lips and let out curls of smoke.

“Then it depends on the TT’s mood,” he said, handing the cigarette to Manoj. “He may let you go or give you six months of imprisonment.”

Nikhil pictured his father, his face red like it had been bruised, his eyeballs hard as stones, as he told his mother Nikhil had been caught by a TT. Then Nikhil thought of the man in a black uniform. He hadn’t looked so cruel. He might have taken pity on him and let him go after taking his money. “If either of you happened to get caught, you’d escape, as you have enough money.”

“I’d prefer going to jail to parting with my money,” Arun said. “My father would come over to get me out, anyway.”

“Me, too,” Manoj said.

“Mine would, too.” Nikhil forced a smile.

“My father would come looking sad and sorry,” Arun said.
“Mine, too,” Manoj said. “And he’d take me back home saying nice words to me.”

“Nikhil’s father would come,” Arun said, “but he’d be so hopping mad he’d start beating Nikhil right outside the lockup.” Manoj giggled.

“Once I went to Nikhil’s shop and his father almost pounced on me,” Arun said.

“I went to his house, too, and his father behaved the same way,” Manoj said.

Nikhil remembered his father shouting at him over supper for having friends like Arun and Manoj. His mother sat next to the stove, serving them. His father had seen Arun and Manoj gambling and smoking at a tea shop. That had been the meeting place for Nikhil and his friends, prior to the orchard. They had to shift locations because one day a police van pulled up and the police officer sitting next to the driver shouted, causing them to disperse. His father had been there to drink tea, but, luckily, none of these days had been a Saturday.

Nikhil kept his gaze outside and wondered if he could keep himself steady with his hands off the handles. Perhaps his friends would notice and pull hm back. Or maybe the air current would hurl him to his death long before they knew. While his friends talked and smoked behind him, he loosened his grip on the handles over and over, and each time he did so, he imagined that the air would snatch him off the gate and throw him into the bushes. It helped him keep his thoughts off his father and kept his stomach from turning and twisting.

“I saw some boys playing cards on my way back from the toilet,” Arun said.

“They look like real gamblers,” Manoj said.

“We aren’t inferior to anybody,” Arun said.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Nikhil said, without looking at them.

▱

There were three of them, boys playing cards, each taller and older than Nikhil and his friends. Two of them sat on a bedsheet folded on the floor, opposite each other; one was clothed in a brown kurta, the other wore a black shirt and leaned back against the wall under the closed window. The pot—a few ten- and twenty-rupee folded notes—lay in an untidy pile between them. The third one was up on the seat, cross-legged, just above the pot, wearing a corduroy coat. They each had three cards and were playing flash.

“Fold,” the boy in the kurta said, slapping his cards on the deck. “The seat is taken,” he said to Arun as Arun lowered himself on the bottom of the empty seat near him.

“Fold.” The boy in the corduroy coat dropped his cards. The boy in the black shirt pulled the pot toward himself.

“You can sit if you want to play,” he said, shuffling the deck.

“Two of us will play, me and him.” Arun gestured with his hand at Manoj, who stood next to him. Nikhil stood behind them. Arun crossed his legs and slid along to make room for Manoj. The boy in the kurta wriggled back enough for Manoj to settle comfortably. Nikhil stepped over and sat on the edge of the other seat, in front of the boy in the kurta.

“Katihar is only an hour away, so our boot amount will be twenty rupees.” The boy in the black shirt pushed forward two ten-rupee notes. His friends pulled their cash from their trouser pockets and counted out the amount in five-rupee notes. Nikhil thought these boys did look professional, especially the boy in the black shirt. He had thick eyebrows and a poised face.

“Agreed,” Arun said, sounding confident. He pulled out his purse and dropped a twenty-rupee note into the pot. Nikhil saw Manoj purse his lips as he followed suit.

The boy in the black shirt dealt three cards to each player, moving counterclockwise. Everybody picked up their cards from the sheet, except the boy in the black shirt, and looked at them, cupping them close to their faces. Arun and Manoj put their cards facedown on their laps next to their purses. Arun drummed his fingers on his knees. The compartment was hot and stuffy and dark because the window across the aisle was closed, too—there was no passenger on that side. The only source of light was a dim electric bulb on the ceiling next to a broken fan. Nikhil felt the wood under him and the metal under his sandals shuddering. His stomach cramp returned, and he tried to forget about it by watching the game.

“Blind.” The boy in the black shirt added a twenty-rupee note when his turn came around.

“Forty.” Arun dropped two twenty-rupee notes. Manoj folded. The other two boys followed suit.

Arun folded when the boy in the black shirt played blind again. The boy pulled the pot toward himself and then pushed a twenty back into the center.

As he dealt the cards, Manoj looked nervous. Arun continued to drum his fingers on his knees, but his smile had vanished. Nikhil hoped his friends would quit the game before they lost all their money. He worried about where they were going to live in Katihar. They’d have to start looking for jobs the very next day. He didn’t feel happy as he pictured himself working at a bicycle repair shop bigger than his father’s and located on a busier road. Sometimes, when his father got mad and didn’t strike him, he’d tell him, “Okay, if you don’t feel interested in books, wipe bicycles and pump air into them from today. And learn how to fix a brake and a puncture.”

Arun looked at his cards, cupping them close to his face. His forehead wrinkled. “Forty,” he said, dropping two twenties. He put the cards back on his thigh. Manoj folded. And so did the boy in the kurta and the one in the corduroy coat.

“Blind.” The boy in the black shirt pushed another twenty rupees. Nikhil guessed Arun didn’t have enough money to play another round.

“I have only a fifty-rupee note left,” Arun said as he took out the note. “Show.” He dropped it and picked up a ten from the pile.

“As you please,” the boy in the black shirt said. He slid the cards into a row and turned them over one by one: six, seven, eight.

“Shit!” Arun cried. He threw his cards down beside those of the boy in the black shirt, letting everybody see he had a sequence, too: two, three, four. The boy swept the pot toward himself. Arun glanced at Manoj, then at Nikhil. He shook his head once looking at nothing, smiling gloomily. Manoj scrunched up his face, as if in regret. Nikhil felt sorry for them, but more than that, he worried about the consequences of their loss. A chill passed through him as he wondered where they were going to stay the night in an unknown city and what they were going to eat.

▱

The train clanked ever so slowly on its way to the platform. The yard was terribly big compared to those of the earlier stations. There were many tracks, and they snaked into each other at places. The platform was lit by tube lights hanging on rods from the curved tin roofs. It was filled with more people than Nikhil had ever seen in his life in one place. They were noisy, and he heard the echoes of a female voice making announcement after announcement on the intercom. A train stood across the platform, crammed with passengers, and when Nikhil turned around and looked out the window across the aisle, he saw another one, equally packed and moving. Arun and Manoj smiled as if they had relatives in Katihar who’d be waiting on the platform to receive them. Nikhil tried to look relaxed, too. He told himself this was going to be the first day of his life when he wouldn’t have to worry about being beaten by his father—until his father found out where he was. But he banished that thought. Right now, all he had to worry about was where he’d be going for shelter and food. This wasn’t a small worry, but he assured himself that it wasn’t nearly as bad as being caned.

He made an effort to enjoy watching what there was to be seen on the platform, which was so much bigger than the others. There were more food stalls and more book stalls, each one crowded. There were more office rooms, more waiting halls, more washbasins, more benches. The benches were made of wood or concrete, all of them occupied, people sitting or lying on them with luggage piled in front of them. On some of the benches, people lay in sound sleep; they seemed to have no luggage to keep watch over and wore old, dirty clothes. They looked like menial laborers without homes. Nikhil wondered if they slept there every night.

“Where’re we going from here?” Manoj asked Arun when the train stopped.

“Back to Jogbani,” Arun leaned back, tilting his head against the backrest. Manoj looked as if he’d guessed the answer.

“Aren’t we getting off here?” Nikhil asked, alarmed. Surely Arun was joking. Nikhil was prepared to sleep on the platform and do any kind of work he could find. But to return home at 1 a.m.? This was impossible. And it would be as late as that—if the train reached Jogbani at midnight, as Arun had said. From there they’d have to walk all the way to Biratnagar.

“You have to have some money to land in a new place, don’t you?” Arun threw Nikhil a glance, turned to Manoj, then straightened his head, shutting his eyes.

“You’re right.” Manoj looked serious like Arun. “I have only fifteen rupees left.”

“I have ten,” Arun said.

“I have twenty-five.” Nikhil felt his stomach cramp returning with a vengeance.

“That’ll be just enough for peanuts,” Arun said.

“Let’s walk around the station till it’s time for the train to leave,” Nikhil hoped this might lighten the mood and his friends might stick to their earlier decision to live in Katihar.

“You go if you like,” Arun said, his eyes still closed.

In the dim ceiling light, they remained seated in the compartment even after the rest of the passengers had gotten off. Arun looked as if he wanted to take a nap, his shoulders drooping, his bare muscular arms loose at his sides. Manoj leaned back, too, though he didn’t tilt his head or shut his eyes; they stared vacantly at the empty space beside Nikhil.

When a vendor passed by, carrying a box of peanuts hung on leather straps from his neck, Nikhil called him over, and the three of them ordered ten rupees’ worth of peanuts. For each boy, the old man separately weighed peanuts on his tiny balance, rolled a piece of paper into a cone, and pouring the peanuts into it, held it up against the window bars. And in turn the three of them pushed their hands through to pay the vendor and take their peanuts.

Because of the stink that hung in the window, they waited to eat until the train was out of the station. And then, as the train gathered speed, letting in drafts of fresh air, Arun pulled down the shutters on both sides. While they ate, Nikhil pictured himself sneaking into his backyard by climbing over the gate, then putting his face to the back door and whispering, “Ma,” over and over. He hoped she would be awake waiting for him, that she’d catch his voice and open the door before his father woke and heard him. When they finished the peanuts, Nikhil expected Arun to push the shutters back up and let in fresh air. But instead, he reached into his pocket, took out a packet of cigarettes, a vial of cannabis dust and a pair of tweezers.

“Cannabis!” Nikhil was surprised.

“What do you think?” Arun smiled—one of his not-so-bright arrogant smiles—as he rolled the cigarette back and forth, causing the tobacco to fall out bit by bit. “I go everywhere with my things on hand.”

“But I didn’t expect you’d smoke cannabis on a train,” Nikhil said.

“What better place is there?” Arun said.

“You’re right,” Manoj said, his eyes on the cigarette, looking as if it were a perfect way to forget about the money they had lost.

After emptying out the cigarette tube more than three-quarters, Arun picked up from the floor his peanut wrapper and smoothed it out on the seat before emptying the vial onto it. Then he lay the cigarette tube beside the dust and inserted it bit by bit into the tube, prying its mouth open. Every few seconds, he held the tube upright and rolled it against his palm. Then he picked up his tweezers and got back to his work. Progress was extremely slow, but he kept at it. When the tube was nearly full, he twisted the mouth shut. Then he slanted it into the flame he flicked from his cigarette lighter.

Arun took a pull and blew out a small, thin cloud of smoke. “What peace it gives!” he said. A smile spread over his face, but there was a touch of remorse in his voice. After another pull, he passed the cannabis to Manoj, who took two pulls like Arun, before passing it back to him. Arun puffed two more times and then held the cannabis out to Nikhil. “Why don’t you try it just once?”

Nikhil hadn’t even smoked a cigarette before. But now he was willing to taste anything in the world that could possibly make him forget that it was already 10 o’clock at night and he was on a train miles and miles away from home, not sure how his father would punish him. He took the cannabis from Arun’s hand and pulled at it deeply, twice, then handed it back to Arun.

“I can’t believe I lost five hundred rupees in less than half an hour,” Arun murmured.

“I lost three hundred,” Manoj said. Both stared at the edge of the upper berth sticking out over Nikhil.

“My father has to sell clothes two days under the scorching sun to earn that much money.”

“My father has to sand wood from morning to evening to earn a hundred and fifty.”

Nikhil looked at the backrest between his friends, his eyelids feeling thick and heavy. His thoughts were getting hazy. There were times when Nikhil didn’t hate his father—when he worked, when his customer haggled over the repair cost and he responded, when the customer was one of Nikhil’s teachers and his father refused to take the repair cost. Once, instead of beating Nikhil, his father lectured him, lying on the cot behind him. Nikhil listened, seated on its edge, not knowing where to look, his mother in the kitchen, squatting, her face on her knees, waiting for the storm to calm down. His father stared up at the rusty, holey sheets of tin sitting on black, rotten wood beams, his hands underneath his head. His father’s voice was soft and pleading, as if he were asking for help: “Just look at the way we’re living. It’s hardly better than how beggars live. There isn’t enough income to rent a proper apartment. If somebody in the family gets sick, there isn’t enough money for proper treatment. We have no respect in society. If there’s a function in the neighborhood, we don’t get invited. Just think. When you grow up and marry, would you want your family to live this way? Or would you want to study hard and work for a better future?”

Nikhil noticed that Arun and Manoj were staring at him. He wondered if he’d been speaking his thoughts aloud. His friends wore faint smiles on their faces that seemed to say they were sad but not worried. When they turned their eyes toward the window, Nikhil concentrated on the shudder of the train and imagined that he was in bed after his mother had served him food.

 

Krishna Mohan Mishra is an MFA candidate in creative writing (fiction) at The Ohio State University. “Away From Home” is the winner of the OSU English department’s Tara M. Kroger Award for the Best Short Story by a Student in the MFA Program in Creative Writing. His stories have appeared in Storyglossia, Green Hills Literary Lantern, and Saltfront.